Hulbert: No, This Isn't a Stock Picker's Market

Don't be fooled by the fact that an unusually large amount of stocks have dropped to 52-week lows while broad indexes have reached record highs recently, says Mark Hulbert, editor of the Hulbert Financial Digest.

That doesn't mean it's a stock picker's market, he writes in The Wall Street Journal, citing several academic researchers.

"The typical stock always tends to move in lock step with the overall market, they say. That reality is just being masked by the bull market's strength," according to Hulbert.

"If they are right, it means you are kidding yourself if you think there are greater-than-normal odds of beating the market when picking individual stocks. Buying and holding a broad-market index fund remains the best course of action for most investors."

You should realize that there will be periods when an individual stock trades out of synch with the overall market, but that doesn't indicate the stock's sensitivity to overall market moves has changed, according to Brian Boyer, a finance professor at Brigham Young University, Hulbert reports.

Larry Swedroe, director of research for the BAM Alliance of wealth management firms, doesn't think much of the idea of a stock picker's market.

"The next time you hear the expression, 'It's a stock picker's market,' (and if I'm certain about anything it's that you won't have to wait long to hear it) remember that there's really no such thing," he writes in a column for CBS MoneyWatch.

"It doesn't exist. It's just a marketing effort designed to get you to drink their [money managers'] Kool-Aid."